Background: Chronic pain problems involving the female reproductive system are major health concerns in women of all ages. As conditions which are poorly understood and often misdiagnosed or ignored, they entail a great personal cost to patients and a significant financial cost to society. One such condition is vulvodynia, or chronic unexplained vulvar pain. A recent population-based study suggests that the lifetime cumulative incidence of vulvodynia is 16%, indicating that approximately 2.5 million Canadian women may experience idiopathic vulvar pain during their lifetimes. Provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) - an acute recurrent pain localized within the vulvar vestibule and experienced primarily during sexual intercourse - is suspected to be the most frequent cause of vulvodynia in premenopausal women, with prevalence estimates of 12% in community samples. Despite its high prevalence and negative impact on psychosexual functioning, there has been a paucity of controlled research to provide empirically validated treatments for afflicted couples. The present proposal draws on our previous cross-sectional and prospective CIHR funded research on the dyadic determinants of pain and psychosexual impairment in women with PVD and their partners, as well as on our past randomized trials evaluating the efficacy of group cognitive-behavioral therapy for this condition. Specifically, the goal of our study is to evaluate the efficacy of a targeted cognitive-behavioral couple therapy (CBCT) intervention that we developed for the treatment of PVD.